#vktxt

[snipsnipsnippy]

On Ahsoka vs. Kenobi Shows

I wrote this as a rebuttal to one of those Anakin is a monster and the Jedi are innocent victims who did nothing wrong ever posts, and I decided I didn't want to bring attention to it, and I had my own things to say.

There's this idea going around that the Anakin we see in both Ahsoka and Kenobi are mutually exclusive and one of these shows "got" him and the other is propaganda.

Simply in the timing of these, yes, Anakin feels different between these two narratives because he is. Kenobi takes place about 9 BBY where we see Darth Vader approaching the heights of his darkness. The light in him is squashed. Anakin isn’t coming out. The only time we hear his voice is to tell Obi-Wan that Vader killed Anakin, that the man he once loved is gone, which is in my opinion refutes its own statement, because that wasn’t for Vader’s gain. If his only goal is to destroy Obi-Wan or hurt him, why say this? It was only to show mercy to Obi-Wan’s conscience. It was the smallest flash of the Padawan Anakin we saw. Which is to say, there is a lot of growth we see in Anakin from Padawan to even the start of the Clone Wars and certainly by the end of it.

So when we see him in Ahsoka, whether you think of it as a recollection, a mystic guide, or Anakin himself, the context of his character growth matters a literal fuckton. Ahsoka takes place about 11 ABY. 20 years later. And Anakin has changed greatly in that time, beyond literally dying. The entire point of the original trilogy was to show Anakin’s redemption from Darth Vader. He’s turned back to the light by the end of ROTJ, or at least some part of him has. Even in the flashbacks, these are 2-4 years after when we see him in the Kenobi flashback. One shows Anakin as he is a teenager in a practice fight against the man he called his brother or father and the others where he is in a literal war zone.

The way Ahsoka’s Anakin is presented is not as a true flashback. It’s a sort of a play presented by current Anakin of their past. So it’s Anakin inserting his history as Darth Vader into his history as this funny older brother Jedi. These flashback scenes were designed to help Ahsoka reconcile that Anakin is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. The point was not for him to feel like General Skywalker or Darth Vader. It was for all of that history to be in one character. If the goal of Kenobi was to free Darth Vader of Anakin to fight the darkness, then the goal of Ahsoka is to remove the separation of the two, to restor balance. If you walked out of Ahsoka thinking Anakin was fully good, you didn’t pay attention. If you walked out Kenobi thinking Anakin was fully evil, you didn’t pay attention.

From the time we meet him, we are told he will bring “balance to the Force”. This doesn’t mean he will become a great Jedi. This didn’t even have to becoming a Sith, certainly not to the extent of Vader's genocide, but equal and opposite reactions and all. In order to balance the dark and light, he must have experience in both. Balance includes the dark and the light, which is the sort of Anakin we see in Ahsoka, using this mix of the dark and light. If you’re going to be mad that Anakin is not pure evil incarnate, you’re in the wrong universe. We are explicitly told that this is not the case. That Anakin is not fully evil. “Good” people do bad things and “Bad” people do good things.

You can’t ignore that these stories are told by their main characters experiences. The way that both Obi-Wan and Ahsoka view Anakin is incredibly important as well as the point of their lives this view is in. Obi-Wan saw Anakin as a reflection of his merit. Anakin’s successes were his own, as well as his failures, and being the only witness to Anakin’s darkest failure, his perception is cast in this darkness. Ahsoka never had this experience. She knew he’d become Vader, but she’d left him when he was still very much a Jedi and she still looked up to him. She remembered him as good and leaned on those memories for support, believing that Anakin was always inside. When she hears of him again, he’s killed his master, not for his own gain but to save his son. Compound this with the fact that she’d been talking with Luke who shared this same sentiment about his father, that yes, he'd done terrible heinous things, but there was always good in him.

All this is to bring us back to the core of this godforsaken universe. The entire message underlying each and every Star Wars project is about redemption. From Anakin to Boba Fett to Han or Ben Solo, Reva, Hux, Kallus, Bo-Katan, I could go on... There has always been this belief that no one no matter the evils they have committed can still do good and find good in their heart if they only make that choice. This doesn’t make them intrinsically good or evil. This doesn’t make heroes or villains. This just makes people who walk both sides. No, Anakin’s atrocities are certainly not excused by any number of good deeds, and he is by no means “good”, but the message in all of Star Wars is that there are no truly good or bad people, no heroes and villains. Even the light and dark sides of the Force are not wholly good or evil. Their defining traits are selfishness and selflessness. There is good and bad in both of these extremes.

Ahsoka is also just getting started. Kenobi’s story is finished. Of course, their character development is going to be different at this point. This is the point where we’re watching Ahsoka step into her own self-led narrative. And her sluggish pace is a valid criticism of the character, but it’s not the final word on her story. I'm excited to see more.

[snipsnipsnippy]

What makes me incredibly sad is that these “girl” trends started with good intentions describing women’s behaviors outside of expectations and celebrating them.

“Girl dinner” was having a random assortment of items that didn’t “go together” or weren’t pretty but that constituted a full meal. Think a cup of milk with cereal, string cheese, and a leftover burrito. It’s not gram-able but it’s sustenance. It was humanizing women.

“Girl math” was at its core about budgeting for the for enjoyment. When you go out intending to spend $20 on a necessity and find it on sale for $14 so you spend the extra $6 on a little treat because you budgeted the $20 for the full trip anyway.

It irritates me that these trends were used to reinforce old tired gender roles of women. They must be skinny so a “girl dinner” must mean as little food as possible, they’re not smart so “girl math” must mean being stupid, they’re not valued so “girl” whatever must mean something negative. Instead of reclaiming these negative associations and reassociating something positive, something human, they were just used against us all over again.

fuck "girl lunch" fuck "girl math" a woman is a hairy animal who sweats and grunts and excretes and hungers and gets wrinkly and dies eventually. you have to love that.

[sejaumagarotama]

Essa historinha de tu não tá comigo me dá um ódio arretado!

Vittoria Moreira

[snipsnipsnippy]

I just saw?? Men??? Are claiming Shin Hati???? excuse me?

She is for the lesbians.

[snipsnipsnippy]

People you would like to get to know better

Tagged by @nadjem-mari

1. 3 ships: current obsession wolfwren (Star Wars) perpetual obsession HanLeia (also Star Wars smh) and my renewed obsession McKirk (Star Trek aos/tos)

2. First Ever Ship: Ohhh boy. I loved Indy and Marion. I know, I know crusty dusty Indiana Jones, but his wife is the coolest. I didn't get the underage thing as a kid, it's incedibly unfortunate, but I do love them as an older couple sm.

3. Last Song: My Love, My Life - ABBA (it's always ABBA)

4. Last Movie: Ant-Man - love Scott, the dumbest lil guy

5. Currently Reading: For like the 15th time Pride and Prejudice bc I just finished Just as You Are, which is a modern lesbian retelling, and... sorry it was just deeply unsatisfying

6. Currently Watching: Ahsoka! and while the schedule tortures me between episodes I started Secret Life of the American Teenager :? delightfully cringy

7. Currently Consuming: just finished some chips and quac?

8. Currently Craving: Milk... and s'mores

Ahah, it's a chain mail kinda day. So, get wreckt @ventresses @anidala-for-ever

[snipsnipsnippy]

Oooh, I wanna talk about this so bad. I love Leia’s complex relationship with the Jedi and the Force and her settling into her story of not just getting married but getting married to this dirty crummy troublesome guy who is absolutely crazy about her.

First, Leia was the first person Luke trained. She built her lightsaber. She made a connection in the Force, and she weighed all of the information now available to her and the darkness she felt not just in her lineage, but in herself. The best course of action was for her to walk away. She was Vader’s daughter, who built her entire life on fighting him. She didn’t know Anakin and she never wanted to after knowing Vader. She was scared to follow those footsteps and then to turn into him because we can all recognize where she got that fire from. She has all of her father’s best traits, the cunning, the passion, the charisma, but with that she also got the instability that comes along with it. Yes, she is capable of emotional detachment and regulation as she literally withholds information from the second most powerful Sith in the galaxy at 19 with no training, but everything we’ve seen from her in canon says that when it comes to people she cares for, she’s not very good at containing that passion. She walked right into his den and choked out a Hutt to save her boys. She would do anything if their lives were on the line. This is the same mess that turned Anakin to the dark side, that destroyed the people he loved and then the people she did. Why would you want to torture her like that?

In my opinion, Leia is stronger for walking away from the Jedi. Its so incredibly powerful to recognize those traits in herself and say “no, this won’t go anywhere good”. It’s an incredibly difficult choice for her to take the “boring” route. I liked Princess and the Scoundrel for exploring this exact choice, and I really wish it had delved more into it because Leia is so lost after ROTJ. It’s that final moment at the ends of the war when she can breathe and finally realize all that’s lost. That she has no home, no future purpose, no family besides these two boys she picked up a couple years ago, one of whom she just found out is her brother from her most despised enemy and the other who fought for all of those years to tell her he loved her. Luke had nothing to offer her in the Jedi except further connection to Vader and a lifetime of wandering. Han offered her a home, even if it was a rickety old ship.

And while I do absolutely believe Anakin would have loved her, and had things been different, they could have been a loving family (in desperate need of therapy), Leia could not love him knowing him as Vader. She couldn’t be part of that family line. Because it’s not about her doing what her family has always done, it’s her doing what isn’t, and it’s finally giving them the peace they all deserved (for a little while). Han is not the “boring” choice. Her having Han and Ben is the ultimate hard-won victory that she never would have before. Women can have domestic lives and still be interesting and powerful characters, especially when it’s her choice to do so.

Now pro Jedi people are against the fact that Leia fell in love with Han and wanted to marry him as well as start a family with him. In fact while this person sees Leia getting married and having kids as boring, it actually makes narrative sense. Should Leia have approached Han after she admitted that she loved him and he admitted that he loved her in order to say “Sorry I can’t marry you because I now suddenly want to join this religious order that we are rebuilding that refused romantic relationships in the past because they thought it would make you evil even though we can change the rules because we are rebuilding it.” But then again these are the people who call Anakin a sperm donor in regards to Leia even though he was excited to be a father and if he never fell, he would be raising both Luke and Leia with Padmé. They act as if he was a deadbeat father who wanted nothing to do with her when he thought his children were dead. As Darth Vader he wasn’t an ideal parent, but he wasn’t someone who voluntarily abandoned his own children. Also I liked that in Legends Luke realized that forbidding family bonds in the Jedi Order was dumb.

[snipsnipsnippy]

Oh man

Have I ever told you guys I only watched Star Wars, like All of Star Wars, in 2020 because I wanted to buy this one sweatshirt?

This one. She was at the Disney Store (rip) and I fell in love with her.

Literally this sweatshirt that I wore every day for three months straight. I’m not exaggerating. I lived in this thing. I would wear it for days, pull it off my body, wash it, counting the minutes until the ding, and immediately put it on from the dryer. I only stopped because summer came. And every fall since, the cycle repeats.

Obviously, I couldn’t just buy it. I had to watch the Mandalorian first, and in order to watch the Mandalorian, I had to watch the films, all of them. And once I watched the Mandalorian (and fell in love with Ahsoka), I had to watch Clone Wars. After Clone Wars, Rebels. So within about a month, I had sped run all of Star Wars main canon. And three years later, I have a shelf full of novels and comics and one devoted entirely to Leia pops. All because of this one sweatshirt. And that, I think is beautiful.

[snipsnipsnippy]

Being an adult is eating soup at 9am because breakfast food is made up and I can have my favorite things whenever I want

[snipsnipsnippy]

Nothing can boost my self confidence more than a lesbian telling me I’m cute.

[frenchmess23yo]

A vampire working at a Sephora would be hilarious af can you imagine, a customer wanna try some perfume so they show their neck, meanwhile Jedediah have to refrain from losing his job cause fuck it if he bites the customer he’s fired. Now imagine a customer who know that and will comment every single time to tease the said vampire trying to make them slip and the two hates each other but slowly. The vampire is waiting every single day for the customer to return. Cause someone in this world know his true form and isn’t afraid of him or disgusted by him.

why are vampires always so ridiculously wealthy? I get generational money, but that shit has gotta run out. Give me a vampire who works the overnight shift at the seedy diner who can’t make rent. A nighttime security guard who’s leeching off a string of girlfriends. Casino vampires?? There’s no windows around. The possibilities, come on. Where are the crummy vampires living their shitty lives?

[snipsnipsnippy]

Today on How The Fuck Did You Do That, the show where we wonder how the fuck you managed to do that. I don’t know how, Jim. I just know that wasn’t there yesterday.

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when your mutual doesn’t reblog the post you specifically reblogged for them… it’s a different kind of heartbreak

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man I need a reset nap

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yeah sorry dude, i don’t think i can do this whole existing thing today, i have a tummyache

[snipsnipsnippy]

That feel when your baloo is too hulla